Martin Schulz
Martin Schulz is a German politician who was a Member of the European Parliament from Germany from 1994 to 2017 and a Member of the Bundestag from 2017 to 2021. During his tenure he was Leader of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats from 2004 to 2012, President of the European Parliament from 2012 to 2017 and Leader of the Social Democratic Party from 2017 to 2018.
In November 2016, Schulz announced he would not seek a third term as President of the European Parliament, but instead would stand in 2017 as the SPD candidate for the German Chancellorship. In January 2017, Sigmar Gabriel announced he would not stand for re-election as party leader and as the SPD candidate for the German Chancellorship, Gabriel recommended Schulz as his replacement.
After the elections of September 2017, which resulted in a postwar low for the SPD, Schulz declared the end of the existing Grand coalition under Angela Merkel and explicitly refused to serve in a Merkel government. On 7 February 2018, coalition talks concluded and Schulz announced he would succeed Sigmar Gabriel as Foreign minister and leave his party chairmanship to Andrea Nahles. After heavy public and internal criticism, Schulz decided not to enter the new cabinet. On 13 February 2018 Schulz stepped down as party chair.
Early life
Martin Schulz was born in the village of Hehlrath, which is now a part of Eschweiler in western Rhineland, near the Dutch and Belgian borders, as one of five children. His father, Albert Schulz, was a local policeman and belonged to a social democratic family; his mother, Clara, belonged to a conservative Catholic family and was active in the Christian Democratic Union. Having grown up in the border area between Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, Schulz has relatives in all three countries.After four years at primary school, from 1962 to 1966, Schulz attended the Heilig-Geist gymnasium, a private Roman Catholic school run by the Holy Ghost Fathers, in Broich, a district of the town of Broichweiden, for nine years. As a teenager, he went to France on a school exchange programme. He left school without passing his Abitur after failing the 11th grade twice.
From 1975 to 1977 Schulz then trained to be a bookseller. The next two years he worked for a number of publishing houses and bookshops. In 1980 Schulz suffered from alcoholism. After a successful rehab Schulz opened his own bookshop in Würselen in 1982.
Early career in municipal politics, 1987–1998
In 1974, at the age of 19, Schulz joined the SPD, became involved with the Young Socialists and in 1984 was elected to the Würselen Municipal Council, remaining a member for just over two electoral terms, to 1998, from 1987 onwards as mayor. At 31, he was then the youngest mayor in North Rhine-Westphalia. He held that office until 1998. As a municipal counselor he initiated the twinning of Würselen with the city of Morlaix in French Brittany, where he became friends with Marylise Lebranchu, who was the mayor and later became French Minister of Justice and Minister for Public Services.Member of the European Parliament (MEP), 1994–2017
In the 1994 European elections Schulz was elected to the European Parliament and between 2000 and 2004 was chair of the SPD delegation. Schulz has served on a number of committees, including the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs and the Subcommittee on Human Rights. He led the German delegation of the Socialist group from 2000 and was also a vice-chair of the Socialist Group in the EP. He was elected group leader in 2004, of the PSE Group, succeeding the Spaniard Enrique Barón Crespo, a position held until he was elected EP president. Since 2009, Schulz has also acted as the representative for European Affairs for Germany's SPD party and his views have deeply influenced his party's pro-European politics.In 2004 as Leader of the S&D group, Schulz introduced a motion in the European Parliament to refuse to give approval/consent to the Barroso Commission on the basis of the proposed appointment of Italian nominee Rocco Buttiglione and his publicly expressed homophobic views. A large majority of MEPs from the other political groups followed and consequently Buttiglione was withdrawn and replaced by Franco Frattini.
By 2008, SPD chairman Kurt Beck has said he wanted Schulz to succeed Günter Verheugen as Germany's EU commissioner following the 2009 European elections; the post eventually went to Günther Oettinger.
President of the European Parliament, 2012–2017
Following the 2009 European elections Schulz came to public attention when he insisted that his group should not immediately approve a second term of office for European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and instead, together with the Chair of the Green Group in the European Parliament, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, proposed the Belgian Liberal Guy Verhofstadt as a candidate for that office. Following reassurances by Barroso, Schulz dropped his categorical opposition to him, insisting only that he should make certain political concessions to the Social Democrats. As a result, the majority of the group abstained on the confidence vote to Barroso.On 15 September 2011, members of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament unanimously nominated Schulz as their candidate for the President of the European Parliament. On 17 January 2012, Schulz was elected as President of the European Parliament, with 387 votes in favour out of 670 cast. Other candidates were Nirj Deva and Diana Wallis.
Together with EU Commission President Barroso and EU Council President Herman van Rompuy, Schulz collected the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the European Union. The Prize, honoring "over six decades contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe", was awarded by a unanimous decision of the Norwegian Nobel Committee.
As president of European Parliament, Schulz proved extremely adept at delicate diplomatic missions, such as his visit with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan following the 2016 coup attempt and his visit with Iranian President Hassan Rohani in November 2015 to "intensify dialogue" between the EU and Iran a few months after the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
In November 2016, Schulz announced that he would not run for a third term in January 2017, and instead return to German politics. He resigned his seat on 10 February 2017, leaving the European Parliament after more than twenty-two years.
Candidacy for President of the European Commission
On 6 November 2013, Schulz was nominated as "candidate designate" by the Party of European Socialists – at the time the second-largest group in the 750-seat parliament –, with the aim to become the first candidate to be elected President of the European Commission by democratic elections. He was unopposed, as no other candidate stepped forward to challenge him in the race to be the socialist campaign figurehead. This kicked off a tour to all member states and particularly all member parties.On 1 March 2014, Schulz accepted the nomination of the Party of European Socialists in Rome. He was elected by 368 PES members out of 404, with only 2 votes against him. Prior to the vote, in what was widely seen as a clear signal to its European partners on the left that there are limits to their support for the EU, Britain's Labour Party had publicly spoken out against Schulz as the left's candidate, instead favouring Helle Thorning-Schmidt of Denmark's Social Democrats. Schulz launched his European campaign on 17 April in front of 1,600 socialist activists in Paris, promising to tackle taxes and social dumping. He ran against Conservative Jean-Claude Juncker, then Prime Minister of Luxembourg, and Liberal Guy Verhofstadt.
However, when the Socialists came second in the European election behind the centre-right European People's Party, Germany's Social Democrats announced that they would accept one of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives taking the German post on the European Commission if Schulz remained president of the European Parliament. The decision to back Juncker for the Commission's presidency instead was later endorsed at an informal meeting in Paris of eight Social Democratic leaders, including Thorning-Schmidt, Sigmar Gabriel of Germany and Werner Faymann of Austria. Accordingly, Schulz did not join the European Commission but remained in his current position.
Domestic politics
Since 1999, Schulz has been part of the SPD leadership under party chairmen Gerhard Schröder, Franz Müntefering, Matthias Platzeck, Kurt Beck and Sigmar Gabriel. Within the party, he serves as co-chairman of the Commission for International Politics, alongside Niels Annen. Schulz was an SPD delegate to the Federal Convention for the purpose of electing the President of Germany in 2004, 2009, 2010 and 2012. In the negotiations to form a coalition government following the 2013 federal elections, he was part of the wider leadership circle chaired by Angela Merkel, Horst Seehofer and Sigmar Gabriel. He also led the SPD delegation in the working group on European affairs; his co-chair of the CDU/CSU was fellow MEP Herbert Reul.During his 2014 campaign for the Presidency of the European Commission, Schulz established himself as a regular presence in German media on issues unconnected to the European Parliament elections that year. By 2015, German newspapers speculated that Schulz was interested in running for the chancellorship of Germany in the 2017 federal elections. In May 2016, he told weekly newspaper Welt am Sonntag that he would not enter the race to succeed Angela Merkel. In November 2016, Schulz announced that he would not seek a third term as president of the European Parliament, but would instead run for a seat on the German parliament in the 2017 elections, which reignited the chancellorship speculations. On 24 January 2017, Schulz was confirmed as the Social Democrats' candidate for chancellor.